In a real estate technology forum today, I saw a question posed by a Realtor about Adsense ads for her site. She stated that she was having problems getting the ads to display properly, and had wasted ten hours trying. It immediately hit me that I could probably write one or two dozen good blog posts for my site if I had ten hours to concentrate on it.

As I've done other types of websites, some about technology, I've tried Google Adsense for them. With pretty good traffic, I never made more than around $20 a month. And, just for research purposes (for posts like this), I added Adsense ads to my real estate site for a while. The first thing I found was that it was almost impossible to get them to stop showing ads for my competitors. So, I tried other ad providers, and they allowed more control of that aspect, but made me even less money.

I've written an article with a better discussion of the problems of ads on your site. There you'll find a number of reasons why I don't think it's a good idea. What is your business? Mine is real estate brokerage, not an ad agency.

The NAR 2008 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers is a great resource to help us to respond to the needs and desires of the real estate consumer. There is also a nice trail to follow for watching trends over time. I pulled out my 2005 copy and the new 2008 Profile. Exhibit 3-17 asked about the value of certain website features to the home buyer.

The same three items were at the top of the list in both profiles, and in the same order. I added the "Very Useful" and "Somewhat Useful" numbers together to show you how they compared:

• Photos - 98% in 2005, and the same percentage in 2008.
• Detailed property info - 98% in both years as well.
• Virtual tours - 85% in 2005, and 92% in 2008.

There is consistent value over time placed in photos of listed homes, and the virtual tour demand was up significantly. When I read this, I see that I should upload the maximum number of images for a home listing, as well as have a virtual tour link in the MLS listing. In an article about the Profile, Photos & Virtual tours, I show you the disappointing numbers from my own MLS. It breaks out results showing 62% of the homes over $1 million without a virtual tour.

Pat Kitano, over at Transparent RE, posted about micro-blogging for real estate. Micro-blogging is being defined as immediate posting of breaking news, with little or no delay using Twitter and other immediate posting sites.

Pat mentions the delay in RSS feeds, as they are dependent upon the subscriber's reader, and how often it requests to be updated. He also differentiates between the two types of blogging, as one is much more immediate than the other, allowing a real estate professional to release "breaking news" type items for immediate display, say on a Twitter page. As Twitter feeds can also be displayed on other networking sites, such as Facebook, this would create an instantaneous, or close to it, breaking real estate news service some people would like.

I'm not sure how many real estate professionals actually have enough "breaking news" type of items to release in this way, or how many people actually would want to get them, but some may choose to receive them as text messages or in other ways that are very immediate in nature. Here are two ways to get this done:

• Immediate WordPress Post to Twitter - Using the Birdfeeder plugin, I've tested and a post is immediately fed to Twitter from a WordPress blog. However, unless you want all of your posts to go out immediately, this plugin won't help. It doesn't allow selecting posts for immediate release to your Twitter account. If it's truly "breaking news" you want to treat this way, you could have a blog set up just for these releases, thus all posts would apply.
• A 5 to 30 Minute Release - I know of one way to get blog posts to Twitter in 5 to 30 minutes. I use Twitterfeed, which takes my RSS feed and sends the posts to Twitter. Twitterfeed will check your feed every 30 minutes (sorry no quicker), and send the post to Twitter. I have found most getting there in under 30 minutes, many in five or so. If it's been 25 minutes since the last check, and I hit the publish button, then the post will get there faster. I send all of my posts there, but you could create a category just for "breaking news," and use that category to feed a special Twitter account just for this purpose. I think that I don't have any news that can't wait a half hour.

Think about whether you really have information that will have enhanced value if immediately delivered. If not, you may risk losing followers who find that your "breaking news" isn't useful news.

This post is not meant to argue the merits of professional photographers and virtual tour production services versus the do-it-yourself approach. There is merit in most solutions out there. If you take lousy photos with poor lighting technique, then hire someone to do it for you. If you're too busy working with clients (congratulations), then you may want to hire out your virtual tour production. However, if you want to take your own excellent images, then you can produce some pretty amazing virtual tours of homes and your area attractions and sites.

I use Animoto.com, and just this week they announced a new feature that removed my last little negative point about their service. They now allow a selection for half speed transitions, which makes the images slow down for better in-home room views.

Here's a full review on Animoto.com's service, and you'll find it worth a lot more than the $30 they charge for the upgrade for a year of unlimited videos.